THREE long and shiny cars hog the kerbside on St Stephen's Green. Celebrity wheels. Through the restaurant window in the warm orange light roseate people are carrying wine glasses and snaffling hors-d'oeuvres. PR people and journalists mostly. The satellites of celebrity. No sign of himself.
Upstairs Colm Meaney and Ulrike Johnsen are mingling. People are giddy just to be in their proximity. The room is loud with laughter. Terrific fun, Ulrike, terrific fun. How long you home for Colm, how longs. Eyes keep scanning the space. Where is he?
He's on the other side of the wall. In a neighbouring room holding court, Ruud Gull it the thoughtful dreadlocked Dutchman who manages Chelsea FC. Despite his job he, seems to have greater standing in the hierarchy of celebrity. His imposing yet friendly presence radiates out of the room, down the stairs, right out of the building to the hordes of girlies who have spent an hour of their time hustling for the privilege of his autograph or the touch of the hem of his bespoke garments.
He is in broad pinstripe today and his forehead is covered in a curtain of tassled hair. The look is so much and so long his trademark that you can't imagine him ever outgrowing it. He will be 90, wizened and dreadlocked someday and still he'll wear it with dignity and panache - and still look dazzlingly handsome. We are ushered into his radiant presence by the PR woman who has solemnly warned us that the footballer wishes not to speak about football today. Yikes.
"So Ruud, you don't want to talk about football.
He shrugs his shoulders.
"If you want we can. It's just that football isn't all that I talk about or think about."
Indeed it is a waste to talk about football to Ruud Gullit when he can speak so fluently about so many other subjects in so many other languages. Footballers holding forth about politics or philosophy area rather like dogs on bicycles. You don't expect to it to be done well, you are fascinated rather by the fact that it is done at all. Gullit does and he does it well.
"It's not all dark and brooding," he says, "I'm not a freakshow because we can talk about other things.
I like to have fun in my life. I like to enjoy myself. I think that giving is also important. Truth. Health. Honesty. Politics. Diversity. They are ally important things. More important than football. They are things we should bring to football."
You peer at him earnestly, trying to convey the depth of this new shared conviction. Your head goes up and down like a nodding dog, eyes saying "I think that too Ruud, I think that too."
Ruud bursts out laughing.
"Or maybe we'll just talk about football."
He talks about both things. Honesty and diversity are chief among the qualities he has brought to English football since his arrival a season and a half ago suddenly lent weight and credibility to the English game's flight from a culture of insular oafishness and a style of kick and rush.
The move to England as a player seemed initially to be a quirky foot-note to a glittering career spent in the more thought-filled dressing rooms of Holland and Italy. He became manager of Chelsea, however, after just one year of wearing their blue jersey and in the months since he has busied himself turning his domain, into a polyglot centre of footballing revolution, buying three Italians, a Frenchman and a Romanian to slot into his vision of the football aesthetics. The high point came just last week when Chelsea, two goals down to Liver pool, took out the scalpel and carved four second-half goals for themselves in a cup tie.
The arrival of the continental artists has created problems for the artisans however. Gullit, the most outspoken Dutch player of his brilliant generation, the man who ended his international career prematurely because of differences with management, has learned the art of talking softly about hard things.
"The hard part of life for one is not to tell lies. Every day there is one decision then another decision about other people's lives. Honesty is important. That is what I try to live by. Sometimes now I'm learning that you have to not tell the truth to protect people. That's different to telling a lie that is also sometimes good, to protect other people from being unhappy."
Lest people become too unhappy, he carries a big stick when he speaks softly. The exit slipway at Chelsea has been as well trampled recently as the welcome mat.
"I make mistakes but I don't make the same mistakes all the time. I make a lot of mistakes and I hope that I learn from them. I give everyone a chance to make mistakes, I just don't make the same mistakes all the time. When they do that then I get angry with players."
London seems an unlikely stage for a man pursuing not just a vision of footballing perfection but a rich cultural existence beyond the sideline.
In full bloom as a genuine footballing genius Gullit schmoozed with Nelson Mandela and spoke articulately about a range of political issues. Then, likely as not, he'd head off and pass the night playing with his band. In England he has learned that footballers drink beer.
"Well, it's different. Life, especially for a footballer, is about moving on. I like new things and moving on. Italy is very passionate country but very materialistic. People need the status of clothes and jewellery and big houses too much. In England that is not so important. The English are like the Dutch. Lots of pride and some arrogance left from the days when they ruled other countries, but the Dutch have been more open because we have to explore the world and communicate through other languages and maybe we are more vulnerable. We have to communicate with everyone. We learn about what goes on around us.
"If the Englishman comes abroad he expects that everyone speaks English. That is not true. But when the Dutchman goes to England it is an interesting experience if he is willing to learn. There is a curiosity in England when a foreigner comes. I have learned that it has more to do with the man who is asking the questions than with me."
HE is keen on learning. In bookshops he is an eclectic browser. He leans back in and trawls through the subjects which have engaged him.
"I like ancient civilisations at the moment. Egypt. The Aztecs. The Mayans. If I see a book about some subject I don't understand I have to have it. I like science, mathematics. If you want a regret in my life it is that football has taken away the time for education. As a boy in Haarlem my life was always get up, go on the train to school, go to football and go to bed. Too much football maybe..."
He is becoming engaged about this issue, leaning forward to explain the business of being a boy getting up before first light and not getting home till after dark and suspecting that there was more to life than this inexorable surge towards the limelight and the pressure cooker of celebrity.
"I know pressure is there all the time. Wherever I go people are looking. They think you must perform as a footballer or a celebrity. There is admiration, jealousy, envy. You know it and must be sensitive to it. I keep my head the same because I believe in myself and my possibilities and my limits."
Suddenly there is a ruffle of excitement among the PR folk. John Bruton has arrived. Another country. Another reception. Another hand for the thinking footballer to shake. The TV lights go on again.
Heads turn. Ruud Gullit shrugs his shoulders and rises and allows himself to be pulled away again. The biggest star in a big room.